GeofCox<p>January 1 - another feast day - then only the peculiar French ritual of the galette des rois (epiphany) before all this celebration of passing midwinter ends...</p><p>This being France, the gallete des roi has nothing to do with royalty, but rather goes right back to pagan 'lord of misrule' traditions: whoever gets the slice of the gallette that hides the 'fève' is king or queen for the day, just as they were in Roman Saturnalia, when the fève, now usually a tiny porcelain figure, was a dried fava bean. </p><p>No doubt the English tradition of concealing a sixpence in the Xmas pudding has a similar origin. So all our festivities - feasting, bringing in greenery to decorate the house, kissing under the mistletoe - take us back not to christianity, but far older human traditions.</p><p>The origin of the Father Xmas figure is in the folklore and shamanistic practices in Northern Europe. The red and white robe alludes to pagan rituals around the red and white hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom, associated in the rituals with reindeer and flying and snow and sleighs - and descent 'down the chimney' also makes a lot more sense if you live in dwellings with a central hearth and hole in the roof above.</p><p>(The idea that Santa's white beard and red and white robe was invented in the US by CocaCola is definitely an urban myth, by the way - there are plenty of descriptions and illustrations of Father Xmas in this dress before CocaCola - before indeed christianity - the Eastern European 'Father Frost' figures, which generally have broadly the same characteristics as the western Santa, were actually suppressed by early christians precisely because they were pagan.)</p><p>Personally, I like the idea of taking part in these rituals that are not religious in the modern sense, but link us much more closely with the natural environment, with natural time, and with human traditions not just a few hundred, but probably tens of thousands of years old.</p><p><a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/HappyNewYear" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HappyNewYear</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/BonneAnn%C3%A9e" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BonneAnnée</span></a></p>